Norman Kings of Sicily and the Rise of the Anti-Islamic Critique by Joshua C. Birk

Author:Joshua C. Birk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Peter/Aḥmad and the Loss of North Africa

The best documented of these eunuchs is Peter/Aḥmad , a man who illustrates both the power of the Sicilian eunuchs and their religious liminality. Falcandus describes Peter as such: “Like all the palace eunuchs, [Peter] was Christian in name and appearance, but Muslim in spirit.” 51 Ibn Khaldūn , who identifies Peter by the Arabic name Aḥmad of Sicily, 52 provides basic biographical data on Peter/Aḥmad that helps historians reconstruct the probable origins of Sicilian eunuchs . 53 Like other eunuchs, Peter was a Muslim from birth, but did not come from the Muslim population of Sicily. He was born on the island of Djerba off the North Africa n coast and then captured by Christians, possibly when Sicily captured Djerba in 1135, and taken to the Sicilian court.

Like other eunuchs, Peter/Aḥmad was baptized and given a Christian name, and he was trained within the court to serve as an officer of the royal dīwān . Peter first appears in the extant documents from the regno in 1141 as an official of the royal dīwān working to re-chart boundaries of lands that Roger I had donated to the monastery of S. Salvatore of Messina and appears in a fragmentary inscription in Latin, Greek and Arabic from roughly the same period. 54 Peter/Aḥmad also issues a document from 1151, a copy of a donation of land Roger II granted to S. Nicholo of Chùrchuro, which confirms his role in the bureaucracy of the kingdom. 55

Peter/Aḥmad rose through the administrative ranks and ultimately succeeded Philip as the commander of the Sicilian fleet by the late 1150s, when he appears as commander of a Sicilian expedition sent on an ill-fated mission to relieve a besieged Sicilian garrison in Mahdiyya. 56 Peter/Aḥmad’s armada was driven back from the North Africa n coast, a defeat Arabic sources blamed on a terrible storm which ravaged the Sicilian fleet. However, the Latin author claimed that Peter/Aḥmad’s flight was a deliberate act of treachery that the eunuch perpetrated at the behest of his superior, Maio of Bari . Falcandus ’ criticism of Peter/Aḥmad illustrates the way in which Sicilian eunuchs fulfilled a universal function of palace eunuchs: serving as scapegoats for failed policies of the crown. 57 Rather than leveling direct criticism at the sovereign, the faulty advice or action of the eunuch would be blamed for causing a mishap.

William does not seem to have held Peter/Aḥmad responsible for the failure to relieve Mahdiyya; the eunuch retained the king’s trust and continued his ascent through the administration. After the death of Iohar , Peter/Aḥmad gained the rank of Master Chamberlain of the Palace. 58 William elevated Qā’id Peter to the familiares regis , one of three individuals who served on this council at the time. 59 On his deathbed, William I gave regency of the kingdom to his wife Margaret of Navarre until his son William II reached the age of majority. William I ensured that Peter/Aḥmad would continue to serve as a member of the advisory council to the queen and his young son.

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